Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
But the longer it was in there, the further and further the rolling water took it out.
“Shit,” I hissed, shucking my boots from my feet.
The next thing to go was my gun as I laid it all on the deck at my feet, took the stairs at a leap and a bound, and started running.
My shirt was gone by the time I hit the bottom of the stairs, and I looked down the beach to see if any of the adults sitting around were paying attention to the kid.
They weren’t.
By the time I’d sprinted half way there, the kid had gone into the water to about ankle deep.
By the time I hit the wet sand, he was in up to his chest.
“Stop!” I yelled at the boy.
You know the tone.
Everyone does.
It’s the sound of a parent’s voice, worried and frantic, telling a kid to stop doing what he’s doing and freeze.
It worked, too.
The boy looked back at me, eyes wide, then his feet were swept from under him as an incoming wave took him out at the knees.
The kid flailed and went under.
The last thing I saw before he was swept down was the wide, fear filled eyes of a boy that wasn’t supposed to be doing what he was doing.
The water felt like quicksand as I took tall, wide steps.
My feet ate up the distance to where I’d last seen the boy and I dove under the water.
My eyes burned as I looked through the water with them opened, and I came up and flipped my hair out of my eyes.
My heart was pounding in my chest as I searched frantically for the red shirt that the boy was wearing.
I couldn’t find it.
I heard more splashing behind me as I was sure Casten and Ridley joined in on the search, but I didn’t come up for air long enough to look for them to corroborate my thoughts.
On my fifth dive underneath the water, with my lungs screaming for me to go back up for air, I finally saw a flash of red.
And I swam for it.
Eyes starting to dot white with the lack of oxygen in my blood, I pushed forward with one last burst of energy and clasped onto the red t-shirt of the little boy.
I was in six feet of water now; by the time I had him in my arms and pushed off to the surface, I was nearly seconds from passing out myself.
I hit the top of the water and burst through the surface, taking in deep pulls of air as fast as my lungs could hold them.
I pulled the boy up with me, but he did nothing more than flop back into the water face first.
I wanted to throw up.
I was holding a little boy in my hands that wasn’t breathing.
The last time I’d done that, it’d been with my own son.
Shaking off those thoughts, I turned the boy over to his back and let his head rest on my shoulder as I paddled into the beach at a diagonal angle.
“He got him,” someone yelled from the beach.
I didn’t look.
Instead, I kept swimming, happy as fuck when I got close enough to the beach where I could walk in.
The moment my upper body was out of the water, I held the boy in my hands like one would a baby and started to breathe for him.
I covered his mouth with mine, pinching his nose, as I gave him a small breath.
Was I supposed to give half breaths? Or were they full? Would I burst his lungs if I gave too much?
Those thoughts sifted through my brain as I did what I could as I hurried to the dry sand.
The moment I was completely out of the water, I dropped down to my knees and placed the boy’s body down onto the sand.
Casten was there the moment I had him completely on the ground.
“I’ve got compressions,” he said urgently.
So we both worked together to do CPR on a boy no more than two.
Somewhere behind me I could hear Ridley on the phone with 911.
I could also hear my mother and Lenore crying.
I didn’t look up at them, either.
Instead, I focused on breathing for the little boy that looked eerily similar to Tanner, puffing breath into his lungs.
And when he started to choke, I started to cry.
A lifeguard pushed me back, and I went willingly as I let the professionals take over.
Then I heard the father say, “Well, that was lucky.”
And I snapped, turning around to glare at the stupid, stupid man.
The man who still had his beer in his hand.
“You stupid fuck!” I bellowed. “What the fuck kind of father drinks his fucking beer while three men, who you don’t even know, rescue his kid?”
I was in the man’s face, and the man was looking at me like I was stupid.
“You had it.”
He was obviously drunk, otherwise he would’ve thought better of his answer.
“You’re going to get fucked,” I hissed, getting close to him. “You can kiss your boy goodbye, is what you can do.”
The mother was behind the father, crying, but I could smell the alcohol pouring off of her, too.
The entire bunch of them were loaded.
Even the minors.
“Cops are here, man,” Casten said.
I turned to find him looking at me with worry in his eyes.
He was wondering if I was about to lose it.
I wasn’t.
But I would’ve given anything—anything—to have my son back, and there these fuckwads were, not even watching a precious gift that they still had, while I no longer had mine.
“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to take a step back,” an officer said from behind me.
I tossed a look at him over my shoulder and narrowed my eyes.
“Fine,” I snapped, taking a step back and keeping both the officer and the parent of the year in my line of sight. “But you’re going to have to make sure you charge him for something. Child neglect, at the least, or I’ll have your badge.”
The officer stiffened. “I’ll most certainly do what the situation warrants, sir.”